JURIST Guest Columnist Glenn C. Smith of the California Western School of Law discusses what a four-four Supreme Court split means for the future of President Obama’s immigration policy… As a professor of complex constitutional and statutory law issues, I’m not used to having people answer my questions in one word! But a one-word “No” [...]
The US Department of Defense (DOD) on Monday announced the transfer of 15 Guantanamo detainees to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Twelve of the detainees were from Yemen, and the other three were from Afghanistan. Six of the detainees had been approved for release since 2009, and the others were cleared for release more recently. [...]
Human rights victims of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ regime petitioned the Philippine Supreme Court on Monday to permanently block the government’s plan to bury him in the “Heroes Cemetery.” The petitioners assert that the burial for the tyrant would be illegal, flout the constitution, violate regulations concerning the military-run cemetery and would violate a [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, warned on Monday that the upcoming trial in Singapore of a teenage blogger is a sign of increased criminalization of expression. The trial is scheduled this week for a 17 year-old blogger who posted to Facebook [...]
A Hong Kong court on Monday sentenced three leaders of the 2014 pro-democracy protests who were convicted on charges related to their occupation of a government building. Joshua Wong and Alex Chow, prominent leaders of the Umbrella Revolution , were convicted of unlawful assembly, while a third activist, Nathan Law, was found to have incited [...]
A group of independent UN human rights experts on Monday expressed concern over Bahrain’s persecution of the Shia population. The experts said, “he intensified wave of arrests, detentions, summons, interrogations and criminal charges brought against numerous Shia religious clerics and singers, human rights defenders and peaceful dissidents is having a chilling effect on fundamental human [...]
Egypt’s public prosecutor on Saturday issued an order for the arrest of 13 people accused of committing profiteering, forgery and embezzlement as part of a national wheat import scandal. Local suppliers have historically added wheat to their imported supplies to claim state subsidies . Egypt offers such subsidies to encourage wheat farming and maintain its [...]
Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement this weekend urging Bangladesh officials to immediately end the illegal detentions of two citizens. Ahmed Bin Quasem and Humman Qader Chowdhury were arrested without warrants on August 9 and August 4, respectively. They were reportedly carried out by men in plain clothes who did [...]
A Nice court on Saturday upheld a ban on full-body swimsuits, known as burkinis, in the southern French city of Cannes. The city’s mayor imposed the ban last month after authorities and surrounding residents criticized the full body swimsuits for being a symbol of “radical Islamism.” Those found wearing burkinis could be fined €38 and [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday threw out a lawsuit by former Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad claiming he was tortured. The appeals court affirmed the district court in refusing to hear the merits of the case because of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) , which removes [...]
